


Once Upon a Tavern

by istia



Category: The Professionals
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, Older Lads, POV William Bodie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-01
Updated: 2011-04-01
Packaged: 2017-10-17 10:35:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istia/pseuds/istia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bodie and Doyle celebrate their thirtieth anniversary, but something's not quite the same as all the previous years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Upon a Tavern


      
    
       Through the door there came familiar laughter;
       I saw your face and heard you call my name.
       Oh, my friend, we're older but no wiser,
       For in our hearts, the dreams are still the same.
    
          --Mary Hopkins, _Those Were the Days_ , 1968

###### 10 February 2006

The Red Lion had had its share of glory days and sinkholes over the past thirty years, but the scarlet gloss paint on the front door never seemed to change no matter the current fashion. Bodie paused to acknowledge a ripple of nostalgia with a wry smile as he pressed his hand to the shiny surface and pushed his way inside. The fug of smoke that used to envelope the room--not a small portion of it thanks to the chain-smoking Anson's Montecristos and Bennett's infernal Woodbines--was missing, but the earthy scent of beer and ale hit him like a punch. African, South American, Hong Konger--even Australian--pubs didn't smell like this; not like the peat of home was distilled into their essence and soaked into the lathe and plaster of their walls.

Bodie huffed a laugh at his own fancy and let the door swing shut behind him, pausing to shake raindrops from his head as he sneaked a glance to the side. Another stab of wry amusement washed over him at the loosening of tension he'd barely been aware of at seeing the shelf of dusty Toby Jugs beside the bar was still in its place.

He pulled his eyes away and stood for a moment gazing around the room, getting his bearings and letting his eyes adjust to the glow of plastic bubble lamps: the present decor seemed to be of the retro variety. Not retro enough, however, to still include the tatty red leather booths that had borne the arse prints of countless CI5 agents back in the day. How many generations of agents had he seen pass through these walls? Four? Eight?

He'd heard it said three generations of an average family spanned a century. CI5's generations were counted in more circumscribed numbers, stretching from recruitment to grave. Often very circumscribed numbers indeed. Sudden infant death, for instance, had been epidemic in Cowley's mob, more like a mediaeval family battling the Black Death than any modern equivalent. Those CI5 lads and lasses who survived to adolescence had a better chance of making it to adulthood, but the middle years offered their own pitfalls, not least amongst them the hazards of over-confidence. Bodie himself had been a hoary patriarch in CI5 terms when he'd left in October 1986, a survivor of a decade plus eight months. And every one of those years spent on the street and on the A-squad, which made him even more of a rarity.

Yeah, he reckoned he might've known as many as fifteen generations flitting through this place, one for each couple of years or so. Vanished generations of the brave and the foolish, some who'd had a gossamer presence, barely felt and hardly seen before they were gone; others with faces and voices he could no longer recall with clarity, but whose names still brought a stab of loss.

Plague survivors tended to dream of charnel houses crowded with memories.

He shook himself back to the present, opening his coat in the warmth to occupy his hands as he cast a more penetrating look around the bar. Getting old meant accumulating losses; nothing newsworthy there. He'd used to wonder how Cowley stood it; and now, somewhat to his surprise, he was three years older than the Old Man was when they'd met and he knew all of Cowley's tricks for survival, plus a few of his own. He didn't know if Cowley'd had demons that pricked at him during the long hours alone in bed after a hectic day, but the melancholy look he'd glimpsed in Cowley's faded eyes in unguarded, contemplative moments was unsettlingly like the shadows he increasingly saw in his own reflected eyes, set now within a network of fine lines. His wrinkles didn't quite yet equal the full map of experience stamped on Cowley's face, but they were getting there.

He squared his shoulders as he caught sight of his quarry on the far side of the bar. Real life, as Oscar Wilde said, might be the life one doesn't lead, but Bodie'd been faithful to the Scouts' motto of "Never say die till you're dead" since long before he'd met Cowley and his repertoire of cliches. He moved to the bar, taking a position in open sight, but far enough away not to attract immediate attention. After ordering a Black and Tan and winning a smirk from the eyebrow-pierced bargirl via the employment of his best smile, he leaned a hip on the L-shaped bar, sipped his drink, and looked past racks of hanging glasses and milling patrons to the lone figure seated in the far corner.

Doyle's thick curls were trimmed, but still had a wild-boy look to them despite being overall grey now. Bodie swallowed at that inescapable pointer to Ray Doyle's being almost sixty, thinking not of the years lost, but of the limit on how many might be left. Doyle was bent over a book or papers on the table, ignoring the Friday night crowd with the single-minded focus so typical of Doyle from their first meeting thirty years ago that Bodie's gaze trembled; he glanced away, took a breath and another sip of his drink before turning back.

And met Doyle's eyes fixed on him, seeming larger, greener, and more piercing than his sharpest memory behind silver-rimmed glasses. A jolt knifed Bodie's gut at the change, but he managed a smile and lifted his glass in a salute. Doyle went on staring with unnerving focus, his mouth set in a hard line.

Bodie set off across the room, smile in place and eyes on Doyle as he dodged people and kept his drink from spilling with the ease of custom, while Doyle's penetrating stare never wavered. "Okay," Bodie murmured to himself, taking a breath, "and once more unto the breach we go, with stiffened sinews and summoned-up blood."

He arrived at the table with his heart beating a tattoo in his summoned blood. He kept his smile insouciant as he sat in the chair opposite Doyle at the tiny table. He put his glass down and looked up to meet Doyle's eyes.

"Well," he said, but then his tongue stuck in his mouth and he had no idea what to say.

"You made it." Doyle's voice was a gruff rasp, but flat.

"Thought I'd forget?" He felt a lick of anger. "I've never forgotten. Why would I this year?" Then, as tension ratcheted up between them, he opted to ease the moment: crossed his eyes and intoned, in his best Herne-the-Hunter voice, "Nothing is forgotten."

It startled a laugh out of Doyle, who settled back in his seat, one hand wrapped around his half-drunk pint of bitter. Bodie relaxed, too, back into the game of their give-and-take, their peculiar connection that transcended...far more than was sane.

Bodie glanced around at the patrons, a mixed crowd he couldn't pin down to one class or type. "This place still favoured by the mob, or what passes for it these days?"

Doyle's eyes left his face for the first time to sweep around the crowded room. "Not much. It's too far from HQ to be a local any more. It's got its rep, though, and a few of the older ones still come in." He'd finished his quick survey and took up his pint. "None tonight."

_So it's just you and me,_ he almost said, but bit down on the inflaming comment, opting instead for neutral territory.

"How's Murph?"

Doyle smiled for the first time, fleeting but familiar enough to make Bodie's heart thump uncomfortably. "He's fine. Still happily married to Liz. Their two girls have his height and her looks. Now they're in their teens, Murph seems to find life more hazardous than when he was on the streets."

Bodie pictured two long-legged beauties. "Good on him. And Liz, too."

"Yeah."

The moment hung between them, a hole where natural questions would fit, only Bodie couldn't think of one. Stupid, to come all this way only to freeze at the gate.

"Where'd you fly in from this time?"

He looked up into Doyle's bland eyes.

"Darwin. Been on a consultancy job for the past half-year as the Northern Territory police re-organise from within, especially in regards to terrorism."

Doyle lifted his glass in an ironic salute. "The Old Man'd be pleased as punch to know you're spreading his teachings far and wide."

The dig in his voice was mild, for Doyle.

"Of course, you always were the wanderer. Last year, it was Perth, wasn't it? Two years' running in the same country: settling down at last, Bodie?"

He stared into Doyle's eyes, now lit with an unholy, angry challenge. Yeah, here it came, right on bleeding schedule.

"I spent ten years with you, Ray." It came out bitter, but he didn't care. "My wandering's been all before and after, so don't talk to me about being unable to settle."

Doyle snorted, but shut up, drowning whatever quick reply he'd probably thought of in his pint. Bodie went on the attack.

"What about you? Settled down again?"

Doyle, damn his eyes, just looked instantly fallen in on himself, like a pricked balloon. Bodie cursed the mix of tenderness and guilt that rose in him, and managed to bite back an apology.

Doyle wouldn't answer the question, he knew; the bleakness in his eyes was answer enough.

"Yeah, well," Doyle said, at last, breaking the brittle silence, "ten years has been my record, too." He raised his glass in an ironic salute. "To us."

"And our anniversary." Bodie saluted with his own glass.

Thirty bleeding years of being in this place on this day: ten years when they'd come together, fit between the jobs Cowley set them; and twenty years since then of neither of them once missing this bizarre annual meeting.

"I only come each year to see if you'll turn up like a bad penny." The brittleness was all in Doyle's smile now.

Bodie smiled back, slow with genuine amusement. They were still as competitive now as they'd ever been; he knew it and Doyle knew it. They turned up each year on this day, in this pub where they'd had their first drink together after Cowley paired them thirty fucking years ago this very night--or, as Doyle liked to describe it, "the day we decided to kill each other no matter how long it took"--in no small measure to make sure they weren't the one who gave up first.

Or died first.

He wondered if Doyle felt any of the nervousness he did as the date approached each year. He'd never been quite sure what he'd do if Doyle didn't turn up one year; track down Murphy, he supposed, which likely wouldn't be that hard, for a man who knew where to look; or Liz, or another of the old mob who'd managed to survive, like Jax. But what he'd do when he came into the pub and found it empty for the first time, and Doyle never came.... He'd never been able to fully picture it.

Doyle would have the harder task finding out anything about him, if Bodie didn't show; if Doyle wanted to look.

Except Doyle would know before the anniversary arrived because Bodie had a letter written and ready amongst his papers. _In the event of my death, deliver to...._

He'd had a version of that letter addressed to Doyle amongst his effects for going on thirty years, tagging along with him to every exotic port he fetched up in; replaced sometimes with a new one, a clean envelope--a new address--but the gist of it the same: The need to make sure Doyle would never be left hanging, in the dark; uncertain, unknowing.

One of the questions he wondered about on one hand, but hoped never to find the answer to on the other, was whether Doyle had an equivalent letter lying ready for him amongst his papers.

He doubted it; but he doubted so much about Doyle.

"So you're on your tod this year, eh, mate? That must be difficult to adjust to."

"I'm fancy free." Doyle gave him a malicious look. "Like you've been all these years. Mr Tall, Dark and Handsome, who'll never be tied down and roams the world a free agent."

_I'm not the one who left,_ he wanted to protest: except, of course, he had been.

Instead, he assumed the superior, smug smile Doyle expected of him, and spoke with lazy affectation: "Well, works well for some of us." He dipped his eyes slowly down Doyle from his head to his chest, trying not to see the odd, broken beauty of Doyle's face, the familiar leanness of his chest, the greying hair peeping out of the top of the white shirt open at the neck. Blanking his eyes to blur the image worked best when he looked at Doyle; he'd adopted that trick, as much as he could, too many years ago to count.

His eyes rested on Doyle's left hand wrapped around his almost empty glass. No ring and no mark on his ring finger, after all these years. The damned marriage had only lasted five years; Doyle's next one barely two. Since then, it'd been less formal arrangements and names Bodie didn't know, couldn't care less about. And now, apparently, no one. The same as last year.

"Maybe we should stop meeting like this."

Bodie's eyes snapped to Doyle's face at his quiet comment. He met Doyle's steady gaze, Doyle's eyes sharp within their set of fine lines. The lines around his own eyes were deeper, Bodie knew, from his years of squinting against harsher, southern suns. He wondered what Doyle saw when he looked at him; wondered if Doyle, too, saw past the grey and the lines to the unquenchable fire within.

"Yeah, we probably should."

But he'd be back next year, inevitable as the turn of the wheel. Doyle, though...? He'd been able to predict Doyle's likely actions once--which way Doyle would jump, how he'd respond--like having a personal Doyle-map he could unfurl at need in his head. The map was tattered now. It might really be time to give up this clinging connection, in a sensible world.

But he'd never fancied living in that kind of world and had no intention of starting now.

"Not a lot of joy here, is there? You turn up, I turn up; we sit and stare at each other for an hour." Doyle snorted. "It's bloody daft."

Bodie shrugged. Everything about Doyle and him had always been daft. Even their hand-in-glove snug fit together, their sweet timing on the streets that'd made them Cowley's go-to men for ten fucking years, their synched thoughts and matched reactions: That connection between them had always had a wild, uncanny edge. Unnatural perfection. Like they were a golem Cowley'd formed from the mud of his hopes and dreams, the ideal tool to protect his precious roses and lavender. A Janus-faced creature with two distinct sides that nevertheless worked together as one seamless entity.

He'd shattered it by leaving, that fragile perfection. Or Doyle had. He was fairly certain Doyle blamed him, as he blamed Doyle; Cowley had cursed them both equally.

Doyle stood, and Bodie flowed up with him, automatic as breathing even after all these years. Doyle stared at him for a moment, then snorted a grin and punched his shoulder.

"Good to see you're whole and hale, anyway, mate. Take care of yourself." He turned away towards the door.

"I'll walk out with you." He fell into step just behind Doyle's shoulder.

He couldn't see Doyle's face as they wove through the crowd; just the greying curls bobbing like a beacon before him, thick as ever, short as when they'd met. His hand twitched, wanting to reach out; he shoved it into his pocket.

It'd stopped raining, and the night was crisp and fresh, but still with that damp feel of English air even on a clear February night. He thought about breathing this air again non-stop; of stopping here again. Of stopping.

He followed Doyle around the side of the pub and across a tarmac puddled with shadows the single light didn't touch. Doyle stopped beside a saloon car at the shadowed end of the car park. Bodie paused beside him, close enough to smell the clean scent of Doyle's clothes and the spiciness of his aftershave. Same damned aftershave, after all these years! Or did he bring it out once a year for nostalgia? He tried to imagine a sentimental Doyle keeping a cache of old memories....

It didn't matter. It was Doyle; Doyle now, Doyle then.

Doyle stared at him, bouncing his keys in his hand. "Need a lift?"

"I don't know. Do I?"

He lifted both his hands and slowly, carefully, like handling a wild ocelot, slid them up to cup Doyle's face. He paused, but Doyle didn't move, neither away nor towards him, and the bright gleam of Doyle's eyes didn't waver.

His move, then, just as it'd been twenty years ago. Up to him again to guess what Doyle needed, what Doyle wanted. Up to him to accept the consequences if he guessed wrong.

He slid his hands farther up Doyle's face till his fingertips were buried in the soft curls, then leaned forward slowly. Doyle's lips were cool under his, beer-flavoured, but lush and soft and they parted after a moment's pressure. Then Doyle's hands were a hot clutch on his hips and Doyle's lean body was pressing against him, and he was pushing Doyle back against the car. Doyle's taste and scent flooded his senses; he could smell him, feel him, down to his pores, and every agonising, ecstatic memory he had flooded his system like a massive adrenaline spike.

Doyle kissed him with the fierceness of the untamed for a long moment, then shoved him away and wiped his hand over his mouth as they stared at each other, panting.

"Dammit, Bodie, what was that in aid of? You'll be off again on your wanderings soon enough; fancy free's what it's all about, isn't it?"

"It never was before, Ray, which you damned well know."

"You're the one who left! It's always you on the move--"

"You wanted to get married! Kid, house, dog, the whole bloody lot, that's what you wanted. I was the one who left the country, but you'd already gone and you fucking well know it."

They breathed like bellows in the still air.

"Yeah, well, that didn't work out, did it." Doyle's voice was laced with bitterness; and, oh, yes, of course he'd aim it at Bodie.

"Not my fault, mate. I cleared out so you'd have plain sailing. I handed it to you on a fucking china plate."

Doyle flinched, and Bodie reached for him instinctively. He closed his hand on Doyle's wiry forearm, suddenly flooded with fear that Doyle would slip away from him in the dark, leaving nothing but the elusive shimmer of his form for Bodie to clutch at and inevitably lose.

"Sorry," he said, and closed his hand tighter on Doyle's tense arm.

Not Doyle's fault, either, that his dream had fallen to dust. He'd had it all: the wife, the dog, the house, even the kid, until the little titch had died in a stupid playground accident. Not many marriages survived a tragedy like that. Bodie'd never been able to erase from his mind the haunted look in Doyle's shadowed eyes the first anniversary after the death and divorce.

Maybe he should've come home then. But Doyle had been too raw to touch; too angry at the world and himself to let anyone near him. Bodie'd quelled his need to protect, never less welcome than then; even he'd seen the folly of it, and taken himself away again. Doyle'd still been brittle the next year, and by the next, he'd hooked up with another woman, all deceptive lazy confidence, as though he'd never shed a tear in his life, and never would.

Bodie'd spent four months of that year with Suzette, and the next seven with Paul. His own life hadn't been empty all these years; just less desperate.

Until now, because he'd given in to his need for Doyle again, after years of playing it safe for both of them. But if this was the last time he'd see Doyle.... He wondered if Doyle's map of him was as tattered as his of Doyle; or, hell, knowing Doyle, he'd probably upgraded it to a GPS by now. Doyle had always known the strings to pull to get what he wanted, and Bodie couldn't bloody trust that Doyle wouldn't follow through on his threat. Or even that Doyle wasn't enacting some convoluted plan resting on his expectation Bodie would jump a certain way if Doyle kicked him just right.

Well, Doyle was either setting him up to fall splat on his face or daring him to make a move. But that was the exhilaration in being around Doyle: Every moment was a leap into the dark. What the fuck. Sometimes the only choice was to take that leap, and he'd always intended to go out with a bang, not a whimper.

Doyle spoke with deceptive mildness. "I thought you had a cushy job in Australia."

"I can wrap it up in a couple of months, then focus on jobs closer to home. Christ, Ray, it's never been about the fucking _job_."

Doyle gave a low laugh. "Home? Didn't think a man like you had a home."

He laughed, too, giddy amusement at typical Doyle tetchiness, familiar as though all the years had compacted down to these last twenty anniversaries, every change suddenly too minor to worry about.

"Everyone has a home, Ray. You've always known where mine is." He stepped closer, feeling the throb of arousal; not unusual, but for the first time in all these years, he allowed it to sing along his nerves and make him ready to take insane risks, on the hunt again with Doyle at his back.

Doyle tensed, but didn't shift away. "What are you saying, Bodie?"

He leaned close, so Doyle would feel his breath against his cheek, and pitched his voice low. "Ten years is the record for both of us, Ray. How about we see if we can beat that?"

Doyle was all eyes in the dark, large within the shine of his glasses, till the gleam of his teeth showed.

"You're still a hopelessly idiotic crud, mate."

Bodie relaxed, the giddiness ramping up inside him. He let his lips brush Doyle's cheek, inhaling his closeness like reaching an oasis after ten years in the desert. Doyle batted him away like a fly, but not before a brief lean of his pliant body against Bodie's that promised remembered warmth and tenderness.

"Fine." Doyle heaved an eloquent sigh, like he was the most overburdened soul that ever trod the earth. "Maybe we'd better see if we can stand one night together after all this time before we talk about ten years, hmm?"

"See if that old black magic's still there, eh? Yeah, reckon we should do that." But Doyle's long fingers closing around his wrist for a moment, proprietary and commanding, was surety enough.

The May tree at the corner of the car park was a tangle of stark black branches haloed by the street lamp. And the sky: Orion the strider encircled by stars cold and sharp as knives. Bodie leaned back in the car's leather seat, put his hand on Doyle's thigh, and sent a silent promise into the aether that, for the next eleven anniversaries at least, neither of them would arrive alone on this night again.

**Author's Note:**

> The "Unto the breach" line is (adapted) from Shakespeare's _Henry V_ , 5.3.44, 50.


End file.
